April 2, 2011Casey Heynes wasn’t just taunted and bullied, he was shamed. The verbal teasing / thrown punches were public humiliations, grand gestures of emasculation. The footage of the incident is raw –raw reactivity. It exemplifies what has been called the shame / anger ‘feeling trap’ by psychologist Helen Lewis. Feeling traps are emotions that circle each other, one emerging as a response to the other. Public ridicule eaves us profoundly vulnerable. Loss of face threatens loss of respect, dignity, and, most importantly, social connectedness. Who wants to be associated with a loser? One way to overcome the humiliating helplessness is to “take charge” –of what is happening internally (how one is feeling) as well as externally (what everyone watching must be thinking about you). Anger / rage does this. Reactive anger overrides feelings of disgrace and worthlessness, while simultaneously ‘showing everyone’ you are not a loser—in fact, you are someone who should not be ‘messed with.’ Of course, rage is not in control, but out of control. Yet we should expect to see more and more of this behavior as shaming becomes more and more frequent, and other alternatives do not present themselves. As Casey tells an interviewer, it ‘just all built up.’ He could either try to shrug it off, draw more negative attention to himself by becoming a tattle-tale, or snap. OR, one of the bystanders watching the daily humiliation might have skillfully distracted the bully, silently signaled their support of Casey, or utilized numerous other social skills that we Need to be Teaching our Children—Now.